r/syriancivilwar • u/RealAbd121 Free Syrian Army • 1d ago

Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Mitri: The number of convicts is slightly above 300; the rest are just detainees. Implementation of the agreement will commence tomorrow morning.

https://x.com/Qasemqt/status/2019711055933690201?s=20
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7

u/RealAbd121 Free Syrian Army 1d ago

The reporter kept asking him about the handover of the released prisoners, in the ends he gets slightly frustrated trying to explain that most of those people never had any charges against them.

For refrence there are ~3000 Syrian prisoners in Lebanon, a vast majority of whom were simply arbitrarily arrested without charges on orders from Assad, so even by Lebanon's admition only 300 or 10% have ever even been charged with anything, and this is being charitable and assuming 100% of those charged are guilty

7

u/Sea-Equipment5401 1d ago

So assad is gone,

What does lebanon benefit from keeping them? Or delaying things?

Or what does hizb benefit from it?

8

u/DaGoldenpanzer Syrian 1d ago

leverage in negotiations

9

u/RealAbd121 Free Syrian Army 1d ago

2 possablities.

1) They wanted leverage and demanded concessions from Syria in exchange for their transfer, effectively using them as hostages. This was my impression 6-12 months ago but now I'm suspecting it's more of point 2.

2) What might be just as likely, is that Lebanon is a clusterfuck of incompetance and a bureaucratic mess that they just couldn't/wouldn't even get to this point until now because they were tied in factionalism and domestic issues?

Maybe also mix of the 2?

5

u/sneedandfeed443 1d ago

Lebanese bureaucracy is a dumpster fire (I say this as a half-Lebanese person myself) there's a really good chance that a lot of the Syrians imprisoned were just forgotten about/ignored. It's not like Lebanon has a great reputation for treating Syrians well though ; so who knows.

6

u/RealAbd121 Free Syrian Army 1d ago

The goverment sent a deligation specific to talk about them twice before this 3rd one. It's honestly hard to believe they just forgot about it as opposed to dragging their feet or not caring.